Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

Precise control over the monomeric sequence on natural sequence-defined polymers (SDPs) leads to their structural diversity and functions. However, absolute control over the monomeric sequence on a synthetic polymer remains a challenging process. Herein, we describe a support-free, protection-deprotection-free, cost-effective, and fast iterative strategy for multigram production of a new class of SDP with a unique functional group, dithiocarbamate, a potential group for material and biomedical applications. The strategy is based on a unique monomer, named as amine-hydroxyl monomer, and a three-component reaction between the monomer, CS2, and terminal chloro group of the growing chain. The fast strategy allows us to synthesize a 5-mer sequence-defined oligomer in 6 h. For a proof of concept, a range of aliphatic and aromatic groups have been incorporated at different sequences in the sequence-defined oligomer. This SDP platform has further been advanced by two ways: (i) multiple approaches for postsynthetic modification of SDP and (ii) increasing the chain length in a single step. © 2020 American Chemical Society.

World University root node

Department of Chemistry

Macromolecules

Sequence-Defined Dithiocarbamate Oligomers via a Scalable, Support-free, Iterative Strategy

A Nb4C3Tx (MXene)-modified glassy carbon electrode was used for the electrochemical detection of Pb2+ ions in aqueous media. The sensing platform was evaluated by anodic stripping analysis after optimizing the influencing factors such as pH, deposition potential and time. The large interlayer spacing, high c lattice parameter and higher conductivity of Nb4C3Tx compared to other MXenes enhance the electrochemical detection of Pb2+. The developed sensor can reach a detection limit of 12 nM at a potential ∼-0.6 V. Additionally, the developed sensor showed promising selectivity in the presence of Cu2+ and Cd2+ and stability for at least 5 cycles of continuous measurements with good repeatability. This work demonstrates the potential applications of Nb4C3Tx towards the development of effective electrochemical sensors.

Biological Sciences and Engineering

Fulltext

RSC Advances

Large interlayer spacing Nb4C3T: X(MXene) promotes the ultrasensitive electrochemical detection of Pb2+on glassy carbon electrodes

The solvothermal synthesis and structural characterization of two new supramolecular coordination polymers featuring a unique V-shaped ligand bis-[N-(3-pyridyl)methyl)]-9,18-methano-1,8-naphthalimide-[b,f][1,5]diazocine (TBNap), are reported. The ligand TBNap was synthesized as a racemic mixture and the molecular structure was analyzed crystallographically. TBNap showed a positive solvatochromism effect which was further supported by DFT calculations illustrating the D-π-A type fluorophore effects within the ligand structures. TBNap was further employed as a potential fluorescence probe for the discriminative sensing of structurally assorted antibiotics. A strong fluorescence quenching and preferential binding affinity were realized for nitro-containing antibiotics, i.e., Furazolidone, Nitrofurantoin and Nitrofurazone. The solvothermal reaction of TBNap with Cd(OAc)2‧2H2O afforded a one-dimensional coordination polymer (TB-CP-1, poly-[Cd(TBNap)(OAc)2]). Similarly, reaction between TBNap and CdCl2.4H2O in DMF-C2H5OH rendered a 4,4’-2D coordination sheet (TB-CP-2, poly-[CdCl2(TBNap)]·DMF). The extended polymeric structures are further propagated into 3D supramolecular network through multiple face-to-face π-π interaction. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Supramolecular Chemistry

Synthesis, structural characterization, antibiotics sensing and coordination chemistry of a fluorescent 4-amino-1,8-naphthalimide Tröger’s base supramolecular scaffold

Tremendous efforts have been made these last decades to increase our knowledge of intracellular degradative systems, especially in the field of autophagy. The role of autophagy in the maintenance of cell homeostasis is well documented and the existence of defects in the autophagic machinery has been largely described in diseases and aging. Determining the alterations occurring in the many forms of autophagy that coexist in cells and tissues remains complicated, as this cellular process is highly dynamic in nature and can vary from organ to organ in the same individual. Although autophagy is extensively studied, its functioning in different tissues and its links with other biological processes is still poorly understood. Several assays have been developed to monitor autophagy activity in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo, based on different markers, the use of various inhibitors and activators, and distinct techniques. This review emphasizes the methods applied to measure (macro-)autophagy in tissue samples and in vivo via a protein, which centrally intervenes in the autophagy pathway, the microtubule-associated protein 1A/1B-light chain 3 (MAP1LC3), which is the most widely used marker and the first identified to associate with autophagosomal structures. These approaches are presented and discussed in terms of pros and cons. Some recommendations are provided to improve the reliability of the interpretation of results.

Cells

Progress and Challenges in The Use of MAP1LC3 as a Legitimate Marker for Measuring Dynamic Autophagy In Vivo

Basophils play an important role in orienting Th2 immune response, and in the pathogenesis of allergic and inflammatory disorders. However, the mechanism by which basophils are kept in check remains unclear and hence we explored the role of regulatory T cells (Treg cells) in this process. We demonstrate that human Treg cells do not suppress rather induce activation of basophils, and promote Th2 responses by IL-3 and STAT5-dependent mechanism. © 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

OncoImmunology

Regulatory T cells do not suppress rather activate human basophils by IL-3 and STAT5-dependent mechanisms

In this article, a new circulating current control architecture is proposed to suppress the submodule capacitor voltage ripple in a modular multilevel converter (MMC). The proposed cascaded control architecture uses the spatial repetitive controller (SRC) in both the outer voltage loop and the inner current loop, and can effectively suppress the second harmonic component of the submodule capacitor voltage ripple even under variable line frequency conditions. The dual SRC-based circulating current controller injects a second harmonic component into the circulating current to suppress the submodule capacitor voltage ripple. The SRC, which is a frequency-adaptive periodic digital controller, incorporates a phase sampling technique to achieve dynamic change in the sampling frequency, can adaptively tune its gain characteristics according to operating line frequency of the MMC. Unlike the existing techniques, the proposed controller uses the submodule capacitor voltage information for circulating current harmonic reference generation and, hence, does not require additional sensing of the output current. Detailed mathematical analysis and architecture of the proposed controller are presented in this article. A 400-V, 1-kW MMC laboratory prototype is developed and experimental results demonstrating the performance of the proposed circulating current control architecture for variable frequency and load conditions are also presented. © 1986-2012 IEEE.

Department of Electrical Engineering

IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics

Capacitor Voltage Ripple Suppression in a Modular Multilevel Converter Using Frequency-Adaptive Spatial Repetitive-Based Circulating Current Controller

Air-conditioning and mechanical ventilation (ACMV), power distribution systems, elevators, and lighting systems are critical electrical assets of a smart building. Based on electrical components of these assets such as electrical motors, transformers, solid-state lighting and power electronic converters, a detailed analysis of failure mechanisms and statistics is presented in this paper. Further, suitable electrical and mechanical signals along with prevalent condition monitoring methods are suggested for condition monitoring of these assets based on the presented statistical analysis. This paper lays down the necessary foundation to understand the operating model of critical electrical equipment in buildings and provides a holistic picture for implementation of a predictive and preventive maintenance paradigm. This will enable the building operators to identify potential failures of building equipment and their evolution in real-time, driving decisions on scheduling repair or replacement of components to minimize downtime, save maintenance costs, improve occupant satisfaction, save energy, and maximize resilience. © 2020 IEEE.

IECON Proceedings (Industrial Electronics Conference)

A Survey of Failure Mechanisms and Statistics for Critical Electrical Equipment in Buildings

In this study, a distributed active noise control (DANC) system for spatial noise control in a network of acoustic sensor nodes based on the behavioural traits of felines is presented. An unified strategy based on incremental co-operative learning and cat swarm intelligence is proposed for noise mitigation in spatial region. The hybrid nature of the proposed incremental cat swarm optimisation (ICSO) algorithm provides efficient noise control without prior estimation of multiple secondary paths. In the developed ICSO-based DANC scheme, the individual sensor nodes communicate the intermediate solutions using incremental mode of cooperation to attain overall global noise mitigation over the distributed network. The performance of the proposed ICSO based DANC scheme is validated for tonal, broadband and practical air conditioner noise control test scenarios. Evaluation results show that the proposed system achieves faster convergence with computational efficiency of over 36% and ~2-9 dB improvement in noise cancellation for different noise cases and acoustic environments over genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimisation based DANC counterparts. © 2020 Cognitive Computation and Systems. All rights reserved.

Cognitive Computation and Systems

Bio‐inspired evolutionary computing approach for distributed active noise control problem

This study presents a passive islanding detection technique based on the approach of total variation filtering (TVF) for inverter-based distributed generation under noisy environment. Contamination of noise in the signal makes the islanding detection threshold less reliable. Therefore, the modal voltage signal is analysed through TVF-based decomposition procedure and several statistical features are obtained from its output. For decision making, the features are compared with the prespecified threshold. To tackle the challenge of islanding detection in the presence of the high-quality factor load, phase angle of the positive sequence voltage is considered as the second level of detection criterion. The proposed scheme is validated on IEEE 34-bus standard distribution system. The scheme is tested under islanding as well as all possible non-islanding network disturbances. Hardware-in-loop results are also presented in support of the theory. A comparative analysis of the proposed algorithm with the well-established S-transform is presented. The proposed scheme is found to be working effectively and can detect islanding condition within three cycles of its inception. © 2020 IET. All rights reserved.

IET Energy Systems Integration

Islanding detection using total variation‐based signal decomposition technique

Various gaseous constituents present in Venus atmosphere have been detected and measured using in situ and remote sensing instruments. However, the measurements of mesospheric constituents above the cloud level are still scarce and inadequate. This is because constituents above the cloud level have a low abundance and a high level of variability. However, millimeter and submillimeter (mm and sub-mm) frequencies can be used for Venus mesosphere measurements during prolonged Venusian day and night because several minor species in the upper atmosphere have emission/absorption bands in these frequencies owing to the rotational transitions. This study presents brightness temperatures and the corresponding sensitivity at the mm and sub-mm wave frequencies for a limb sounding radiometer. This will be useful in potential payload design, that is, instrument design, frequency, bandwidth selection, and satellite altitude as well as pointing accuracy determination for measurement above Venus clouds. For this study, a simulation based experiment has been performed and presented to determine the mm and sub-mm wave frequencies, optimum for estimation of concentration of water vapor, CO, CO2, SO2, HDO, and HCl present in the mesosphere. The simulations have been performed using a radiative transfer model called Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Simulator. The mm and sub-mm wave measurement frequencies have been determined for both day and night time of Venus. It has been determined that 183, 380, 448, and 556 GHz frequencies are most suitable for water vapor measurements, 115, 230, and 345 GHz are optimum for CO measurements, and 600, 621, and 690 GHz frequency measurements are sensitive for HCl detection. ©2020. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.